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Discuss replacing discord/something awful with something here.
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:31 AM
Before a single person says one thing about software the most important bit has to be solved: What's the governing structure of the org running this? 99.99% of passion projects burn out within a few years, so if you want something to last it has to have an actual group of people who share the burden of running it.
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:31 AM
yeah i was thinking something like that
can we do some kind of co-op thing
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:31 AM
@smarxist was thinking about this earlier right?
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:32 AM
I ran a site for nearly a decade and I burned out and it died and it took a small community with it and the only upside is by then other sites had sprung up so they had a place to land.
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:32 AM
oof
its kinda amazing lowtax has kept his shit going
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:33 AM
a testament to how much you can do w paste and baling wire
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:34 AM
Oh yeah and sorry CS majors but the software is actually not important at all. Throw a xenforo install up on a VPS somewhere and theme it. Don't try to copy SA, do your own thing. A lot of SA's code is dedicated to mean humor and punching down - beecocking, autobans for pressing the wrong button, forums cancer, etc. Come up with better things and not just renamed copies of what existed before.
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:35 AM
take the good ideas, leave the rest
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:35 AM
The only thing that'd require coding is the reg system if you're going to paywall it, and I assume that the auth plugins for xenforo would let you automate that
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:35 AM
I do like probations and the like though
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:35 AM
probes exist on other forums
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:35 AM
i think the paywall is essential
just hook it directly up to community funds to help people
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:37 AM
I don't know what the mod tools look like on SA so I have no way to compare but there's mods that have sent out screenshots so you'd have an idea. Or ask one of the good ones that got run off what tools they have / what they wanted. See what's already out there - warnings/probations/bans aren't unique to SA, every forum has them which means every forum has admin control panels to run them.
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:37 AM
is there any good leftist theory on running internet forum enterprises
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:37 AM
If you really want to keep the KF crew away write up a good CoC as well. They fucking hate CoCs.
Like garlic & vampires level hate.
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:38 AM
brain is failing to fill in what that is
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:38 AM
Code of Conduct
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:38 AM
ah, yes
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:38 AM
suggestions for cocs?
familiar with lots for open source projects
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:39 AM
There's some good ones already out there, pick the ones the trolls hate the most
when the 4chan crowd absolutely loses their mind over one that's the one you should pick.
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:39 AM
I may reach out to my peeps at sunbeam.city about their coop experience
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:40 AM
whats that
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:40 AM
N) Respect People's Pronouns <-- this one. Just holy shit do they get the most angry at this one for some reason
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:41 AM
lmao
no shit
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:42 AM
xenforo is $160 base, we'd need to raise a little $
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:42 AM
you're gonna need to add a few zeros to that to get started on something like this.
that's literally not even a rounding error in the costs.
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:43 AM
stating the obvious a bit
creating a demo to have a poke, curious to see what forum software is like these days
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:45 AM
Ballparking here but a few grand could get a site bootstrapped and run for a few months, but you're going to have to pay someone for the payment processor integration and definitely someone competent to check your security because there will absolutely be hits on it. Don't forget the cloudfare costs.
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:46 AM
https://2e9faa21ebca4d39.demo-xenforo.com/216p1/
XenForo demo
Forum software by XenForo
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:46 AM
Don't think this is me shitting on it - I think a solid leftist forum with strong moderation is a really good idea. I just want it to succeed and not crash & burn like so many of these do.
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:46 AM
Yeah
And, as I said, literally cannot do this alone
I'm a code jockey not an organiser
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:48 AM
Which is a completely unimportant talent in the context of running a community. SA only needs one because radium fucked up so bad that they can't possibly upgrade to something supported.
Comedy time: When that 0day vbullitin exploit went around and took out so many big sites SA was saved because their VB was way too old for it.
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:51 AM
So who wants to be in charge of organisation planning
JonJoe 02-Jan-20 01:51 AM
put smarxist in charge
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:52 AM
pass. I'm absolutely not in a place I can take on a massive project.
Mae 02-Jan-20 01:52 AM
oof recaptcha absolutely has to go fuck this shit
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:53 AM
do they have you identifying pedestrian value based on social score yet
Harik 02-Jan-20 01:54 AM
"Check the squares that a human can be hiding in" WAIT A MINUTE
Addamere 02-Jan-20 01:56 AM
there is no reason to fear the recaptcha bots they are not hostile to humans and in fact they love humans
they only want to know where the humans are hiding so they can hug them and bring them chocolate
tollymain 02-Jan-20 01:57 AM
ballistic chocolate
Tuxedo Catfish 02-Jan-20 01:57 AM
they fucking HATE traffic lights though
some kind of inter-mechanical rivalry
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:03 AM
feel free to register on the forum and play around
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:03 AM
I think a paywall is essential but we should probably start with a big base of cspam regs getting invite codes
the most important thing to a project like this is 100% uptime and a decent amount of activity, imo
also a very detailed mission statement and transparent admin procedures
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:04 AM
oh and you probably won't get any traffic because SA still exists so if this happens at all it will be as a bunker after a massive fallout there.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:05 AM
I dunno about that
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:05 AM
the value of a social network is the usercount squared.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:05 AM
I think if you created a place that felt like home but functioned better and had real staff, you could easily poach most of cspam
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:06 AM
inertia is a big deal.
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:06 AM
also a bunch of trans peeps
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:06 AM
that's the only real user base of SA I'm interested in
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:06 AM
You have to not only convince people - you have to convince enough people that you get a viable user base.
otherwise they'll check it out as a novelty (like this discord) and then wander back to c-spam.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:07 AM
another thing that's important to me is year 2020 feature integration, so, previews for tweets, news articles, imgur, etc, embed video, also app integration proper, like your Twitter account, steam, discord, etc
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:07 AM
I'm no academic but I do watch communities and the nuking of 8chan absolutely demolished the toxic communities there.
And that's with them having prepared offsites and bunkers for that kind of thing.
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:08 AM
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/th-paywall.4621/
[TH] Paywall
[TH] Paywall - Show a paywall to non-premium users Description This add-on sets up a paywall requiring users to purchase a user upgrade to view your forums. Features Users upgrades displayed: Immediately after registration On all...
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:09 AM
I'd want the forums to be totally readable without an account
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:09 AM
Because only a fraction of the userbase made the transition - even with the main site being gone.
You want at least some private forums
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:09 AM
does the readability to people without an account not invite kiwifarms behaviour?
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:09 AM
nobody wants all their shit up on google
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
some private forums
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
isn't all of SA open without an account?
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
no
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
yeah you're right
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
yes, the KF people buy accounts. That's a lot different than random twitter chuds getting a burr in your butt and doxxing you.
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
most of it is but theres a rotating bit
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
similar setup then
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
tgrs for example is paywalled
and its equivalent should be on an alternative
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
a hard paywall category, then open general forums
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
as of today it's all paywalled
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:10 AM
I think everything is paywalled right now but yes, normally stuff like tgrs and private game servers are paywalled
coupons & deals, etc.
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:11 AM
I believe that this addon can do that too
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:11 AM
also any "personal" subforums should be paywalled, im not talking about dating but like if there is a peer support or relationships venting or rl organizing section, etc, just to think of a few examples
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:11 AM
probably because most sites have a "hello new user" forum and when you're fully authed you can see everything.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:11 AM
true
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:11 AM
nobody wants to show up to a job interview and have the issue plinkey did
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:11 AM
yeah that was gross
fuck Bert for that
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:12 AM
whats that
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:12 AM
an SA poster with a grudge accused plinkey of stealing from the goon fund to fuel his gambling
repeatedly
for months
and then posted about it on his uh
patreon?
kickstarter?
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:12 AM
gfm
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:12 AM
gofundme?
ok
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:12 AM
yeah
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:12 AM
anyway, that was tied to his real name
and it was the first result for his real name on google
consequently he did not get a job
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:13 AM
fucked up
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:13 AM
yeah
it's sorted now though
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:13 AM
Another cost: https://www.themehouse.com/xenforo/subscribe/xf2-essentials?plan=quarterly
XF2 Essentials
With the various tools your forum might need and a variety of theme choices, we help solve the burden of dozens of licenses by bundling some of our XenForo...
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:13 AM
because the first response to googling his name was "THIS MAN IS A DRUNK GAMBLING ADDICT WHO STEALS"
because of a forum grudge
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:14 AM
do you have to pay monthly fees for these tools or can they just be purchased once?
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:14 AM
plan=quarterly
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:14 AM
anti ddos will probably be important too
speaking to the 100% uptime goal
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:15 AM
I already said cloudflare earlier
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:15 AM
if you have any momentum going and the site goes down for a significant time you're dead
I'm positive we could have about 100 users posting at a time by the end of the first month
if not more
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
i know you already touched on this but we really really want to avoid the lack of transparency and few points of failure problem that SA has
lots of people who can approve things
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
we could also soft launch on discord to get some content and discussion going before promoting it
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
and who are consistently around
and a way to easily make new button pressers
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
anyway peace it's 3am my time and my sleep schedule has to be fixed
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
night
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
night
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
almost 7pm and I'm ded
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:17 AM
yeah, I gotta crash, but I'll start a Google doc mission statement kinda thing later
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:18 AM
yeah
I think to get this off the ground we need to crowdfund at least six months of costs
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:18 AM
smarksit you serious about putting money towards something like this?
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:18 AM
we'll role this channel and get a core of volunteers
yep
or raising it and contributing
I'm pretty good at that stuff
and I have a decent sized twitte
r
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:19 AM
well, cool. I really hope it works. It's fucking hard to move a community but sometimes it's worth doing.
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:19 AM
well, it's in your hands for now, ok?
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:19 AM
question
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:19 AM
😄
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:19 AM
and i dont mean to sound rude or besmirch anyone
or to invalidate ideas or stuff
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:19 AM
I think there's no better time than now to start thinking about this
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:20 AM
q: "What is the benefit of making a new off-site forum, when other off-site forums already exist? What would be different enough about this that it would not be just as good or even preferable to merge this community of people with an existing off-site?"
i do not remember their names but i know people have mentioned several existing SA spinoffs
like one for LF refugees
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:20 AM
safety, transparency in admin, and responsive administration
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:20 AM
yeah
those would be my goals as well
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:21 AM
no off sites have that, no institutional soc media offers that
also
explicitly left politics and cultur
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:22 AM
Gonna throw one last downer on this: Having a left forum on a massive site like SA (and yes, it's massive compared to anything that doesn't purchase users by the millions) means lots of people get exposed to it when they come for something different entirely.
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:22 AM
those are good answers to the question, and one of the first concerns i think in ur mission statement and any sort of messaging or advertising or whatever you call it has got to be getting that across and also getting across why that is good
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:22 AM
you don't have to take a quiz on Marx to buy an account, but you should know that supporting the neo liberal hegemony would get you ostracized and maybe banned if your an asshole about it
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:23 AM
So maybe an offsite for something more focused than "just grab TGRS and C-SPAM", like maybe one dedicated to political organizing.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:23 AM
true harik, I don't want to be a cul-de-sac
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:23 AM
since it's not going to serve the same purpose of dragging people left.
My trajectory since my '01 regdate was republican like my parents -> dumbass libertarian -> liberal -> leftist
that's almost entirely due to SA.
Tuxedo Catfish 02-Jan-20 02:24 AM
i don't read TGRS much but the pro-active moderation there during this whole shitshow was very encouraging
like "imagine that, people coming in just to stir shit and derail legitimate concerns got banned on sight"
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:24 AM
I did not come to SA for the politics, but I found it anyway and it changed my views.
Tuxedo Catfish 02-Jan-20 02:24 AM
"didn't realize SA actually did that any more"
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:24 AM
I think there's a lot of pipeline already established though, we don't want to be a cul-de-sac, but at the same time the online left is ready for a big platform that's out loud lefty (edited)
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:25 AM
A forum that people come to for the politics will not have that effect, and if it cannabalizes the community on SA it will be an absolute negative.
Because the chuds aren't looking for offsites, they're actively colonizing.
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:26 AM
not sure it's worth fighting to save SA tbh
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:26 AM
I'll write something up tomorrow and get feedback
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:26 AM
we cannot fix its biggest problem
that is, lowtax
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:26 AM
Their home isn't SA, it's 4chan and KF and all the hate subreddits. Nuke the left on SA and the only place on the net where video gamers aren't constantly blasted with nazi propaganda goes as well.
Same goes for all the other popular forums.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:27 AM
we're just spitballing right now, this project wouldn't have a significant time or any money cost for a few months at least
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:27 AM
yeah, lets not jump into anything too quickly
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:27 AM
I'm just saying that as a focus a place for people to graduate from SA to more active politics would be the most ideal.
And having an existing base that can welcome refugees if lowtax throws a tantrum is a good thing.
but c-spam needs fighting for.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:28 AM
as a start, but if it catches, I'd want to try and grow horizontally to catch as much left oriented media, discussion, organizing as possible
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
a games subforum seems nearly inevitable tbh
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
yeah, unavoidable lol
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
yeah, games are mainstream now
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
commies are gamers
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
everyone is a gamer
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
truf
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
well-moderated leftist game forum seems like a hefty pitch
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:29 AM
boomers are not gamers
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:30 AM
like if not with a l33t h4x0r pc master race battle station then with consoles or handhelds or phones
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:30 AM
okay I'm gonna crash for real, back later
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:30 AM
kk
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:30 AM
thanks for all ur doing smarxist
night buddy
Tuxedo Catfish 02-Jan-20 02:31 AM
the two things people flocked to SA for originally were, believe it or not, GBS and Games
I don't think a GBS equivalent would have the same effect, because the appeal of talking about random shit with strangers is almost entirely subsumed by Twitter today
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:31 AM
i came to sa for the dungeon crawl stone soup thread i think
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:31 AM
Let's Play, BTB were big draws.
Tuxedo Catfish 02-Jan-20 02:31 AM
well also porn and filez if you go WAY the fuck back
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:31 AM
i came to sa for dorf fort lps
Harik 02-Jan-20 02:31 AM
The entire fucking genre of "let's play" on youtube that's like a billion dollar industry now originated on the forums.
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:32 AM
i think i joined to post in the minecraft thread
funny that i stuck w sa a lot longer
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:32 AM
pyf is ok
Addamere 02-Jan-20 02:32 AM
im gonna try to sleep also, nite folks be well
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:32 AM
same soon
nights
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:32 AM
bread and roses forum
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:34 AM
wait i had an idea
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:34 AM
broses
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:34 AM
twitch bits, but for posts
Mae 02-Jan-20 02:35 AM
is that reddit gold?
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:35 AM
i was gonna say i think reddit does that
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:35 AM
and no insane staff cut on purchase, just enough to cover fees
and users can cash out tokens for gift cards or Visa buxx or something
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:35 AM
nah (edited)
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:36 AM
wait you probably become a money laundering site then
nm
Tuxedo Catfish 02-Jan-20 02:36 AM
i would be careful if -- yeah
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:36 AM
I was just trying to think of a way to encourage creators to post
Tuxedo Catfish 02-Jan-20 02:36 AM
don't design a system people can put money into AND out of
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:36 AM
i mean i have nothing to worry about from a "to each according to their posting" system but
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:36 AM
artists, writers, etc
tollymain 02-Jan-20 02:37 AM
just having a solidly moderated space that doesnt exist to make money would probably go a long way
smarxist 02-Jan-20 02:37 AM
true
we'd have to plan hard around that
if the site has to subsist on donations and reg fees
and you don't want to serve up adverts
or sell data
people are more willing than ever to toss a few bucks a month at anything they like though
you'd also have to make sure every link in your chain doesn't sell data either
but it'd be a good selling point
JudgeJW 02-Jan-20 07:26 AM
Here's a hot take
I think a year from now people are going to be interested in a forum type site, because it will be something different, and not the empty homogenized impermanent nightmare of social media
JonJoe 02-Jan-20 07:31 AM
that is a good take thank you
JudgeJW 02-Jan-20 08:15 AM
Thanks I've listened to Felix rail about the death of forum culture and the rise of monoculture on Chapo enough times
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 08:20 AM
so, I have small scale experience with this and the whole thing is both way more and way less difficult than one would think. The short version of my opinion is you're better off trying to improve SA than starting something new
I used to be a prolific poster on a hellscape of a forum called top-law-schools. It was always problematic but things became untenable for us after its absentee landlord sold it to a virulent racist and asshole
So, we started a new forum as a non-profit and tried to do it legit: we established a corp, got the appropriate status from the IRS, got authorized to do business, set up a website, everything. We even tried to create content to help get better seo and help with the migration
But, the administration of it has been hellish and untenable. It's impossible to get the BOD to do things. Because it's a real corp with real bylaws, that's also the only way to do things
So, if you get interested in this stuff spend a lot (a lot) of time thinking it through
And make sure you have people who can run it with at least a part time job level of commitment
smarxist 02-Jan-20 08:59 AM
how many users were you handling?
UnwantedPlatypus 02-Jan-20 09:00 AM
tbf combining a leftist forum with a money laundering front is a unique way to grow the forums
not sure its a good idea though
smarxist 02-Jan-20 09:01 AM
I ran a video game forum community for like half a decade that at its peak had about 300 regulars and 50-60 concurrent posters. it's definitely more work than you think it'll be, also because of what you have to deal with, you don't really feel like a participant in your own cool community because you have to deal with the bullshit. Squashing drama, keeping up with cultural shifts, seeking and destroying problem users, etc. In fact, I'd say the biggest threat to the venture is if the place is TOO successful and gets popular and has lots of people come in with their big online personalities and decades of blood grudges that they'll want you to manage
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 09:02 AM
We have about 13k accounts. Recent peak usage was around 500 concurrent users.
smarxist 02-Jan-20 09:03 AM
oh wow yeah, way more than what I've handled
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 09:03 AM
It's a lot of work. I'm the legal head of the org and have been trying to resign for months, unsuccessfully lmao
smarxist 02-Jan-20 09:03 AM
definitely in the part-time-job category
lol
how does it pay for itself? donations?
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 09:03 AM
Yep
Totally ad free
smarxist 02-Jan-20 09:04 AM
is it modern software?
or some legacy shit like SA
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 09:04 AM
No, it's just shitty phpbb shit
Which is why it's cheap to run I guess
I'm not good on the tech end
smarxist 02-Jan-20 09:05 AM
do you mind if i ask about what it costs a month to host?
just so i have a ballpark
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 09:05 AM
I'd have to look it up. All I know is we have enough cash on hand to operate for several years without another cash raise from users
smarxist 02-Jan-20 09:05 AM
nice!
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 09:06 AM
Our operating expenses are def low four figures a year
And much of that is insurance and other shit because we are paranoid lawyers/lawyer types
smarxist 02-Jan-20 09:07 AM
lol
i think the safest place from being sued is a forum fulla lawyers
Bushido_Brown 02-Jan-20 09:11 AM
The asshole racist who bought the old forum is very litigious
So that was part of the fear. Not that we thought he had a basis.
We incorporated in Texas because oddly they have very good free speech protection wrt defamation and stuff. I've wondered if that kept us from being sued in the first year
Anyway, I still just want to caution on the whole thing. We had a group of like-minded people who had known each other for years. It lead to the destruction of friendships, learning things about people you didn't want to know and more
Cloaked 02-Jan-20 09:40 AM
probably obvious but something to consider with social sites is how to generate the initial spike of content; people are unlikely to generate posts if they don’t think people are there and people are unlikely to be there unless people are generating posts.
a community transfer of some magnitude from SA might do it, or organic growth from a thing like discord and a transfer from that maybe, but I can also imagine that paying people to generate articles or stuff might help
cause then people show up for that stuff and want to hang with other people that enjoyed that stuff
curation is also a thing; i feel like there’s a lotta paid newsletters these days that have short-ish commentary on a collection of external content.
atelier 02-Jan-20 10:39 AM
suggest talking with the folks behind archive of our own and how they organized that as well, not a forum but also in the business of serving user text without charging or ads and quite successful
Mae 02-Jan-20 03:10 PM
I want to say that due to the recent drama on SA I want a space for trans peeps on this project, but also we don't just post about being extremely not cis, we also have other interests, only one of which is politics.
tollymain 02-Jan-20 03:37 PM
forum w two major divisions for subforums, bread / roses
Cloaked 02-Jan-20 04:20 PM
if you're like me and go looking for a book whenever a topic is in your head, I found a free one on community that looks interesting; it doesn't seem completely applicable end to end since it seems colored a bit with a context of product-based communities (like, open source projects) but hey, free. download link is a little down the page. https://www.jonobacon.com/books/artofcommunity/
soydivision 02-Jan-20 05:13 PM
is there any well maintained open source forum software out there other than discourse? bc discourse is kind of meh
Mae 02-Jan-20 05:19 PM
kinda doubt it tbh, just because of how dead the forum concept is
just gonna spam what I find in here
https://flarum.org/ - php 7, mysql 5.6, mit licensed, looks modern
gonna skip some that I know are probably not worth looking at though
https://mybb.com/ - php 5.2 (7.3 rec), postgres 8.1, mysql 5, sqlite 3, gpl v3 license, much older codebase, I contributed to this more than a decade ago
MyBB - Free and Open Source Forum Software
The official homepage for MyBB, a free and open source PHP forum software.
Doot 02-Jan-20 05:27 PM
Last time I had to run a big forum of goons I used an extensively modified myBB and I was pretty happy with it.
Pouring one out for the global goon union.
soydivision 02-Jan-20 05:28 PM
yeah but...php
Mae 02-Jan-20 05:29 PM
Forum software I've contributed to: OpenBB, YaBBSE, XMB, MyBB, PunBB, UseBB, ... I think I have a problem
But yeah, php is not great for resources
flarum looks interesting at least since it's a php7 codebase
soydivision 02-Jan-20 05:32 PM
did hear about this one the other day http://www.firestormforum.org
Firestorm: The Elixir and Phoenix based web forum.
Firestorm is an Open Source Phoenix-based forum and comment system. It exists to provide a self-hosted and open source alternative to Facebook, Discourse, or Google Groups.
Mae 02-Jan-20 05:33 PM
ooo
Elixir
their forums are down lol
Uses Vue for frontend, nice
flarum is kinda shit in that it regects categorisation
it can do nested categories, it's just that it doesn't show shit all about them
it's just nowhere near ready oof
smarxist 02-Jan-20 05:51 PM
would you prefer a trans forum specifically, or maybe a queer spaces forum w/ trans megathread and other such threads?
Mae 02-Jan-20 05:52 PM
https://nodebb.org - nodejs based, gpl v3 license, has hosting options available
NodeBB Forum Software | Drive user engagement with a modern commun...
NodeBB Forum Software - A better community platform for the modern web. NodeBB is a next generation forum software that's free and easy to use.
the latter
smarxist 02-Jan-20 05:52 PM
if we do the big lefty forums deal, we can have forums for different class antagonisms, like a race issues space, low income/poverty issues/resources, etc. and then a catchall GBS set of forums for chat, media, video games, politics news, etc.
Mae 02-Jan-20 05:56 PM
yeah
arts, crafts and tech too
because a lot of us do those
having a space to be angry is one thing, but we also need to practice self care
and not everyone who's being pushed out of sa is comfortable talking politics all day every day
tollymain 02-Jan-20 06:04 PM
bread side for serious conversations and roses side for things that make dealing w the serious things worth it
Mae 02-Jan-20 06:35 PM
https://thredded.org/ - ruby on rails, mit license, really nice and minimal interface, a blend of traditional and modern
Thredded
Forums, feature-rich and simple.
Mae 02-Jan-20 06:44 PM
lacks any real moderation/reporting workflow
Would it be ok if I bring https://sunbeam.city/@puffinus_puffinus in on this? They have some experience as the admin and participant in sunbeam.city:
Sunbeam City (or SBC for short) is a young cooperative of individuals whose mission is to promote what we believe to be the values of the solarpunk movement. Part of what we do includes running services that are open to everyone, away from the control of profit-seeking, centralised corporations. We lead by example through using democratic decision-making and sharing resources to run these services.
Puffinux (@puffinus_puffinus@sunbeam.city)
14.5K Toots, 512 Following, 520 Followers · Who am I? ❂ Solarpunk Eco-Anarchist ❂ Always learning ❂ OU undergrad student (Engineering) ❂ I like books and the history of class war ❂ Plant shepherd ❂ I make things ❂ Common-or-garden 20 year old cishet male. I do ...
Mae 02-Jan-20 06:56 PM
@smarxist your opinion on this in particular, as I don't want to step on your toes regarding any planning you might do
smarxist 02-Jan-20 07:02 PM
i'm okay bringing in someone else if they want to pitch in, i have nothing concrete as of yet
Mae 02-Jan-20 07:07 PM
ok
Jack2142 02-Jan-20 11:03 PM
I don't really have a good connection there, but someone could maybe get in touch with the people who set up sufficient velocity it was a splinter board off another forums that was dying under aging servers and the mods were chuds, so they might be sympathetic somewhat or could give advice on setting up a new forum. (edited)
Dumb Lowtax 02-Jan-20 11:47 PM
hey y'all i'm not good with php or large programs but i'm giving you my moral support for trying to solve this important problem of "what's next"
can i just say that one thing i actually appreciate about our old ass platform is that it does NOT have the ability to notify people that they've been quoted or replied to. That forces each member of a conversation to read the whole conversation, not just the posts about them, and it's responsible for a whole lot of broadening of horizons IMO. It's exactly the opposite of reddit style hit and run posts for upvotes, where you only see or care about replies to your one reply and miss the broader conversation as it matures.
yassss 2
megathreads are amazing precisely because a conversation that goes on for a decade, surviving daily derails and arguments, inevitably matures a whole lot
smarxist 03-Jan-20 12:32 AM
I've been thinking about how SA has entropied into a collection of a dozen mega threads per forum and I like it a lot, you feel like you can nest and get to know everyone, individual threads can even have their own cultures, it'd be hard to foster that but worth doing
owo 2
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:41 AM
i generally dislike it everywhere but c-spam
as much as im not attached to the effortposting past quoting an image and saying lmao is something id rather read on discord
as opposed to it taking forever to catch up on a thread when things happen and i dont want to just skip ahead
and 90% of the posts contribute jack shit
it is occasionally a hassle on c-spam as well but less so
Thunderbeast 03-Jan-20 12:42 AM
I feel like you can't really quote an image and lmao on discord though
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:42 AM
like the chat aspect of it is very tiring
is what i mean
theres chats
Thunderbeast 03-Jan-20 12:42 AM
k yeah true
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:43 AM
trump launched a missile now let me read 80 pages of ayy lmao to try to get some news i didnt already hear
idk the format is just bad for that level of chat in megathreads i think
dont get me wrong i love chatting clearly
Thunderbeast 03-Jan-20 12:44 AM
oh are you talking about the trump thread specifically
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:44 AM
no
Thunderbeast 03-Jan-20 12:44 AM
that one moves way too fast for me
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:44 AM
this has pissed me off in games for over 10 years
Thunderbeast 03-Jan-20 12:44 AM
oh I follow now
Dumb Lowtax 03-Jan-20 12:47 AM
there are slow threads and there are fast threads. this fact is a very good thing. the trump thread, as silly and under-informed as it is sometimes, is still 100% the first stop to make when a major event happens like this drone strike, because you need a fast conversation to catch things right as they happen. no one needs to "catch up" on the trump thread after several posts because it's just chat. meanwhile there are a lot of slow threads that i do stay caught up with because i don't want to miss a thing, and they still feel like a continuous conversation.
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:47 AM
megathreads in specific however tend to be fast
forums wide
even just megathreads for popular games
Dumb Lowtax 03-Jan-20 12:48 AM
i can think of a lot of programming threads for instance that are definitely slow threads (just a few posts per week), that are even harder to read than many fast threads because they are not a continuous conversation; they're a series of totally disjoint questions and answers
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:48 AM
the trump thread doesnt bother me but i also do more scrolling than reading
some threads are just worse it depends on the subject and speed (edited)
i do get tired of doing more scrolling than reading in the trump thread
its w/e tho it doesn't like drive me to a breakdown like 90% of things that bother me
Dumb Lowtax 03-Jan-20 12:49 AM
don't read it like that then, just go there to drop a shitpost and see if it catches any replies (scroll until you see yellow), or peek in when there is a live event happening and you need the latest details
Jon Do 03-Jan-20 12:49 AM
i just feel differently about the chatty megathread aspect of the forums
yeah i can figure out how to read a forum
and nah im usually looking for embeds or memes which it's easily the best for
which means lots of scrolling
martyparty 03-Jan-20 01:21 AM
so just make twitter i guess welp
tollymain 03-Jan-20 01:33 AM
theres a lot of smaller megathreads that just hum along as a conversation with only a few pages a day at most usually
Harik 03-Jan-20 02:18 AM
It'd be fine to notify that the thread had a reply to you for some threads, it's distinctly lacking on q and a threads
If you forget to mash f 5 you look like an asshole
Especially if someone drops an effortpost and you miss it for a few days
Same for fast moving chat threads too, no possible way to read it so skim the next page or two for yellow and hope someone responded quickly or not at all
Reddit and Twitter suffer more from their nesting fragmenting conversations than reminders that you got a response. After two deep it's basically private messages on both platforms because it's hidden by default
JudgeJW 03-Jan-20 11:23 AM
lets just make a mastodon server
@Mae @smarxist if you want to invite your people here i'm down with it
Thunderbeast 03-Jan-20 12:07 PM
I'm already on beach.city but i look forward to following all of you
Actually i may move because beach City has a role about cw'ing all political stuff so i rarely use it
Cloaked 03-Jan-20 01:03 PM
re: forum software, has vanilla been mentioned? (don't have experience with it, was just browsing) https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla
vanilla/vanilla
Vanilla is a powerfully simple discussion forum you can easily customize to make as unique as your community. - vanilla/vanilla
Mae 03-Jan-20 01:42 PM
nope! thanks
Mae 03-Jan-20 01:51 PM
this looks interesting too, basically slack/discord but with specific sub topics: https://zulipchat.com/
The world's most productive team chat
Zulip combines the immediacy of real-time chat with an email threading model. With Zulip, you can catch up on important conversations while ignoring irrelevant ones.
smarxist 03-Jan-20 03:06 PM
I'm not big on Mastodon, it's kinda like an even more twittery twitter, like the old twitter power user setup with the 4 columns. if people want forums and don't like timeline soc media, they're going to like Mastodon even less
SHYNUDISTGRRL 03-Jan-20 03:14 PM
My problem with mastodon is that you already need to know people to know which fiefdom to join. But we'd have that hashed out
tollymain 03-Jan-20 03:18 PM
my understanding of mastodon is that its twitter organized like irc
Mae 03-Jan-20 03:35 PM
it's just twitter really, but with less corporate control
I don't think it's what we're looking for though
Mae 03-Jan-20 04:05 PM
Vanilla has this: https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/purchasepremiumroles-plugin
Purchase Premium Roles 0.1.7b
Which seems like it'd be ideal for purchasing access
It is written in PHP, but it's modern PHP
Mae 04-Jan-20 01:40 AM
Just having a fuck around as a way to avoid the forums
Discordia 04-Jan-20 02:02 AM
I know it doesn't fit the categories but dorks with sporks not being under bread just seems wrong (edited)
Mae 04-Jan-20 02:40 AM
Apparently a bunch of LPers have been having this discussion at the same time as us
Turtlicious 04-Jan-20 02:44 AM
I thought the LP offsite was the lp.zone
Mae 04-Jan-20 02:56 AM
no idea
Mae 04-Jan-20 03:12 AM
@Rea it's all in hea!
Rea 04-Jan-20 03:12 AM
lp.zone is an SA offsite but it's practically dead by now
the admins just kind of abandoned it and stopped promoting it
and the forum software they chose, Discourse, was extremely ill-suited for screenshot LPs
Mae 04-Jan-20 03:13 AM
don't think anyone here's a fan of Discourse thankfuly
Rea 04-Jan-20 03:14 AM
for the LP offsite i've been working off phpBB
mostly because it's
a) free
b) secure enough that it had a 10 year span without any CVEs, so we don't have to worry about chud fuckery
it's not an explicitly political forum but the mission statement is a LP forum that's explicit in its support of LGBT+ LPers and readers
which, y'know, i think would mesh well with a left-leaning offsite
Mae 04-Jan-20 03:16 AM
yeah
Rea 04-Jan-20 03:17 AM
i do have one main paranoia with merging with here, though
and that's worrying about chud infiltrators and doxxers
i feel like being an explicitly left forum would paint a much bigger target for those who'd seek to do us harm, and i'm not sure the LP people would be on board with that
Turtlicious 04-Jan-20 03:19 AM
There needs to be more leftist places on the internet, especially because there's so many chuds and doxxers online. There has to be places that are against that.
Rea 04-Jan-20 03:20 AM
can't disagree there
Mae 04-Jan-20 03:01 PM
@Rea anything happen last night? I cant see the chat any more
poultry slam 04-Jan-20 04:00 PM
I was peripherally involved in the transition from neogaf to resetera. they did a soft launch for people from their transition discord and opened up to the public a bit later which meant they already had content and regulars on it by the time they opened to the public. I think it would be good if we did a closed beta similiar to that, and then attract new posters by promoting it in other left wing communities. Resetera got a large influx of registrations from the initial press coverage about it, so it would probably be benefitial to reach out to leftist podcasts and youtubers after launch. If we frame it as an attempt at a sort of dual-power style Alternative Institution to profit driven social media, we could possibly get some of them on board to promote the site. Big fan of the Bread & Roses branding. It's subtle enough that it can be recommended to normie friends without immediately alienating them.
Mae 04-Jan-20 04:15 PM
Seems like the way to go
Just need to get organised and actually plan this
smarxist 04-Jan-20 04:59 PM
i also really like the Bread & Roses concept for branding purposes
and the idea of a soft launch
OwO
ummm should i buy that immediately?
that's insanely perfect
Mae 04-Jan-20 05:18 PM
works for me
I worry about the length, but then ... forums.somethingawful.com lol
Grand Prize Winner 04-Jan-20 05:24 PM
breadroses, maybe?
Swampy Pete 04-Jan-20 05:25 PM
go for the 90s gnr reference, breadnroses
Mae 04-Jan-20 05:25 PM
kinda like breadnroses 😄
breadnroses.club
.cafe works too as a way to set the mood
Swampy Pete 04-Jan-20 05:26 PM
random gnr fans walk in confused, we explain the chinese democracy album to em, they walk out communists. it's brilliant.
Mae 04-Jan-20 05:26 PM
nice
.pub also
@smarxist did you end up creating a google doc?
breadnroses.chat is also available
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:32 PM
i haven't yet
i'll work on it this weekend
or tomorrow rather
Mae 04-Jan-20 05:33 PM
ok, just want a place to put notes, so perhaps I should make a note taking place
What do you think about these domains?
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:34 PM
i like breadnroses.club
and its super cheap
i just regged breadnrosesclub@gmail.com, i'm gonna buy the domain with it and start a doc
with how fast things are degenerating at SA, I wanna push up the timeline a bit and try to get moving
not like, sprinting to open, but at least getting everything fleshed out
i'm gonna write kind of a mission statement/design doc
that everyone involved with can comment on and suggest changes
and we'll decide changes based on discussion and a vote if necessary
Mae 04-Jan-20 05:37 PM
sounds good
I think it'd be best if one person holds all the assets for now
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:39 PM
as far as like admin passes and shit?
Mae 04-Jan-20 05:39 PM
Yep
There's still the question of trust and safety
And we need to build an org with tools to handle that
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:40 PM
fo sho
Mae 04-Jan-20 05:40 PM
I'm just saying I'm comfortable with you having everything under your control for now 🙂
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:40 PM
i trust everybody in here, and we'll figure out a system of a sort
no one person will have sole access
is there some kinda fukken, i dunno, password scheme you can do where like, you can give a team of admins, say 10 each a password, and if 6 or w/e number enter it somewhere, they can get some kinda master pass? in case they have to oust an admin or admin duo? obv. the less people who have full credentials the safer, but yeah
Bushido_Brown 04-Jan-20 05:42 PM
Sounds like a secret sharing scheme
Grand Prize Winner 04-Jan-20 05:43 PM
i hope this doesn't sound too absurd, but would a publically-viewable mod forum be out of the question? it seems like one of the bigger problems at SA is that we can't see any proof that anything's getting done
otoh huge privacy/security risk
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:43 PM
i was actually going to suggest that
as a selling point
i think moderator/admin discussion should be pretty much transparent
unless it involves sensitive details w/r/t security or someone's personal safety
Grand Prize Winner 04-Jan-20 05:45 PM
clear and open communication would probably be good
eesh i phrased that weird
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:47 PM
lol
Grand Prize Winner 04-Jan-20 05:48 PM
bob ross's baker cousin
smarxist 04-Jan-20 05:48 PM
haha
Grand Prize Winner 04-Jan-20 05:48 PM
happy little baguettes
SHYNUDISTGRRL 04-Jan-20 05:51 PM
can't help but think of godaddy's tasteful ad campaign
poultry slam 04-Jan-20 06:06 PM
Do you mind if we use framapad instead of google docs? Would be cool if we could avoid proprietary services as much as possible in this project
Mae 04-Jan-20 06:06 PM
sure as fuck
smarxist 04-Jan-20 06:07 PM
yeah that's true
Doot 04-Jan-20 06:11 PM
Ew GoDaddy
smarxist 04-Jan-20 06:11 PM
i know i know, i forgot they were gross
Mae 04-Jan-20 06:11 PM
https://semestriel.framapad.org/p/9e9c-breadnroses?lang=en
Doot 04-Jan-20 06:11 PM
I just hate them, as a computer toucher, half their shit is broke
smarxist 04-Jan-20 06:12 PM
well we only need them to DNS our shit for us
JudgeJW 04-Jan-20 06:55 PM
Dibs on being rhe mascot
poultry slam 04-Jan-20 07:16 PM
vanilla looks like a good choice at first glance. Need to go to bed soon, but I'll download it and take a closer look tomorrow. I think it's more important to launch the site quickly before cspam implodes than to be perfectionist about it. It looks like it has good addon support, so we could probably implement missing features after launch relatively easily. I have never written PHP before, but am willing to learn if we don't have enough devs
Mae 04-Jan-20 07:17 PM
good luck getting it running
I was foiled because it requires node 10 and I have node 13
Jerk 04-Jan-20 08:16 PM
Oh hi, I don't got no technical skills to help but if group funding goes up I can kick in
JudgeJW 04-Jan-20 08:34 PM
Same, but also I'm good at the community managing thing
Cloaked 04-Jan-20 09:14 PM
re: password management chat from earlier, from what I could tell lastpass has fairly mature group/organization password management tools. not sure if it'd be overkill, probably depends on how many logins end up existing.
smarxist 04-Jan-20 09:15 PM
yeah lastpass is good (edited)
Cloaked 04-Jan-20 09:15 PM
not sure if the multi-key-fragment stuff exists in an approachable software tool though. that shit is neat.
smarxist 04-Jan-20 09:16 PM
it's something to think about hard and hell it should be on offer for moderate sized groups to organize their credentials in a way that's like, self protected without needing an abstract like an LLC or something
or a lawyer
no group should have some "this one guy can fuck everything over" setup
Cloaked 04-Jan-20 09:17 PM
there's the oldschool way of just chopping up the info and making sure folks know which piece they have.
but that seems messy to manage; "okay, if these six people have it then it works, but this other group of six people technically don't since their fragments overlap"
smarxist 04-Jan-20 09:21 PM
lol, remember PAR files from news groups?
put super credentials into a zipped up text file, then create 12 PAR files, give 1 to every admin, then chop the file in half and require 6 par files to re-create the zip
PAR files were the most magical thing ever to teenage me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive
Parchive
Parchive (a portmanteau of parity archive, and formally known as Parity Volume Set Specification) is an erasure code system that produces par files for checksum verification of data integrity, with the capability to perform data recovery operations that can repair or regenera...
but yeah this discussion is getting a bit silly, we got other way more pressing things to hammer out
Cloaked 04-Jan-20 09:26 PM
yeah, agreed. I feel accomplished that I think I figured out the security buzzword for the concept though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_cryptosystem
Threshold cryptosystem
A threshold cryptosystem, the basis for the field of threshold cryptography, is a cryptosystem that protects information by encrypting it and distributing it among a cluster of fault-tolerant computers. The message is encrypted using a public key, and the corresponding priva...
Harik 04-Jan-20 11:03 PM
you know there's actual tools that do ring signing without weird workarounds
Grand Prize Winner 04-Jan-20 11:31 PM
weird workarounds seem more traditional tho
Cloaked 04-Jan-20 11:37 PM
would be interested in hearing about those tools, haven't been exposed to many cryptography tools.
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 09:51 AM
I set up vanilla (with the self hosting guide in a lamp stack to avoid having to use docker and node) and it's looking good so far. I'll be screwing around with it more after dinner and post impressions
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 11:44 AM
I'm impressed with vanilla. It has a minimal core with basic forum functionality and everything else is added through modules. It comes with 25 preinstalled, but not all of them are enabled by default. Those already cover all functionality that SA had. It does not support spaces in usernames by default, but you can change the username check regex in a config file to make it accept spaces. The API looks great and can definitely be used for an account purchase system. Easiest way would probably be to move users from a guest role to a member role after purchase.
has an invite system built in that we could use for a closed beta
avatars are quite small in the default theme, that would probably have to be changed
Mae 05-Jan-20 11:49 AM
what instructions did you follow?
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 11:49 AM
https://docs.vanillaforums.com/developer/installation/self-hosting/
Vanilla Forums Documentation | Self Hosting Basics
Vanilla Forums, create an online community that your customers will love
if you're on mac os, you could probably just drop it into MAMP, it just needs a basic apache/nginx + mysql/mariadb + php stack
Mae 05-Jan-20 11:52 AM
It's not possible to use PHPs dev server?
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 11:55 AM
Don't know, haven't used it before, but XAMPP or MAMP take less than 5 mins to set up
Mae 05-Jan-20 11:58 AM
Eh
honestly not going to tough either of those
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 12:08 PM
uh ok
Mae 05-Jan-20 12:31 PM
I just honestly don't have the patience for this shit any more, nothing quite like dicking around with server configuration to make ones day just that little bit extra shit
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 12:32 PM
I don't even know what you think there is to configure, but ok 🤷
Mae 05-Jan-20 12:33 PM
I'm talking about apache/mariadb and php
only other choice is to compile and package xampp myself
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 12:34 PM
why would you have to compile it?
Mae 05-Jan-20 12:34 PM
Much prefer working with software that doesn't come with so much baggage
Because it's not packaged for Arch
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 12:34 PM
I am on arch
just install it with the install script
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xampp/ and it's on the aur
AUR (en) - xampp
A free and open source cross-platform web server package (LAMP Stack), consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages
Mae 05-Jan-20 12:35 PM
that's what I'm using
tbh last time I used either mampp or xampp they were utter garbage, but that was like 10 years ago
hahaha nooooper
don't think so somehow
smarxist 05-Jan-20 12:39 PM
don't make yourself crazy Mae, you can fiddle if you have energy, but we're still on a weeks+ timeline rn
if we soft launched something by July i'd be happy
Mae 05-Jan-20 12:40 PM
if I'm gonna do anything at this point it'll be spinning up a server
and actually put in the effort to configure that correctly
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:19 PM
so what exactly are we doing now?
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:23 PM
I'm willing to help with sysops stuff. I'm pretty good with Ansible, Terraform, and Linux
And I'm AWS sysops certified
@Mae if you're just doing dev work why not use a Vagrant image?
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 01:26 PM
at the moment I think we lack a defined set of requirements / desired timeline / etc, and have not set up the tools to collaborate on that itself. impression I have is that smarxist is trying to drive that.
but fiddling to help understand what forum software to go with is encouraged since picking that is important
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:30 PM
Well either way I'm willing to help as it's good learning for me. Collaboration wise I'd say config/infrastructure as god in a git repo with peripheral branching and pull request/review procedure is a good start
(If I'm stepping on toes because I just kramered in saying shit I will stop)
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:30 PM
Because I hate things 😄
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:30 PM
S/god/code
@Mae fair. But vagrant owns and is super simple for dev work
You can even get pre built images with LAMP
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:32 PM
The real reason though is extreme burnout
All of that stuff became super popular around the time I started experiencing hypothyroidism symptoms
So super tired all the time, on top of being burned out from work
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:33 PM
Completely understood
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:33 PM
I just never had the concentration to actually get familiar with it
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:34 PM
https://box.scotch.io
Scotch Box ♥ A Vagrant LAMP Stack That Just Works
Scotch Box is a Vagrant LAMP stack That just works.
If you're curious that looks like a nice simple way to get a dev box up quick
(I use vagrant all the time but I've never used that scotchbox image)
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:44 PM
scotch box looks interesting, I'm gonna try that and learn about vagrant. I don't know much about modern sysadmin tools, I don't even use docker, all my servers are hosted bare metal, the old school way
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:45 PM
Vagrant is just a nice simple way of spinning up VMs
You install VirtualBox and Vagrant
Write your Vagrantfile
Then vagrant up to launch it
The nice thing is you can include the vagrant file in your git repo and then everyone who's developing has the same env
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:46 PM
can it be used with kvm/qemu instead of vbox?
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:47 PM
Possibly
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:47 PM
chloe
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:48 PM
@poultry slam I think you need a plug-in for that
Oob it's VB, HyperV and Docker
@Mae pretty sure there's a free version
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:49 PM
more of a comment on paying to upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 and PHP 7.2
because holy shit
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:49 PM
Eh, you're paying for the work they're doing not the software itself
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:50 PM
wow
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:50 PM
There are other LAMP images for vagrant if you don't want to use that
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:50 PM
Yeah
I mean it'll probably do for now
but not for future development
not at all
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:50 PM
vanilla wouldn't even work with 7.0 if I understood their docs correctly
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:50 PM
shit
7.1 right?
I think I read they're going to require 7.2/3 this year?
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:51 PM
said something about 7.2 being minimum from 2020 onwards, don't know if that's just about support or an actual limitation (edited)
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:51 PM
yep
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:52 PM
https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/vagrant-ubuntu-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp/
How to setup a LAMP development environment in Vagrant
In the previous tutorial, we have learned about the basics of Vagrant. In this tutorial, we will move to next level and will learn more about Vagrant ...
That's the manual way
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:52 PM
we should be demoing other forum software anyway, but I'm gonna look into other lamp images with 7.2 (edited)
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:53 PM
Also, does Vanilla support nginx?
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:53 PM
I might just set up a manual one as a learning project
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:53 PM
Because Apache is...yeesh
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:53 PM
it does
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:54 PM
https://app.vagrantup.com/provolution/boxes/lemp-box
Vagrant Cloud by HashiCorp
Vagrant Cloud by HashiCorp
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 01:54 PM
I just used apache for it because it's quick and easy with their .htaccess for demo purposes
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:54 PM
There's a free lemp images with php 7.2
And all the be Le and whistles
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:54 PM
Apache would be amazinng if they just trashed the default configuration
Because it's mostly shit that doesn't need to be there
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:55 PM
Nginx owns bones
Mae 05-Jan-20 01:55 PM
I used to have my config down to about 20 lines for a server
Nginx owns, but php-fpm is a garbage fire
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 01:55 PM
Fair
Thankfully I don't have to deal with php on a daily basis
Though I do have to deal with tomcat sooo
Here's a lamp image https://app.vagrantup.com/syone/boxes/lamp
Vagrant Cloud by HashiCorp
Vagrant Cloud by HashiCorp
Mae 05-Jan-20 02:00 PM
nice thanks
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:00 PM
That site lets you search for images if you're looking for anything
I love hashicorp
Anyway if you need help with infrastructure or sysops stuff please lmk
Dm or my name at gmail
Or just at me binch
😊
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:04 PM
thx for helping, I'll be screwing around with vagrant for the rest of the evening
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:04 PM
Welcome!
@poultry slam the provisioner section of vagrant files is cray helpful and powerful and you can just use bash or if you want to get fancy, you can use ansible
So if something in the image isn't quite right you can script the change
Mae 05-Jan-20 02:10 PM
done a bunch with ansible
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:11 PM
where are we gonna host the git repo?
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:11 PM
It's good and I love it. We do pretty big deployments at work with it and terraform
@poultry slam github private repo?
Never mind I'll shut up
I'll start the wiki
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:19 PM
I was gonna ask for one that doesn't have ice contracts, but I guess wasting github's resources would be a good thing
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:20 PM
Gitlab instance somewhere?
There's bitbucket too
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:22 PM
let's just use github for convenience unless someone is strongly against it
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:22 PM
I defer to the politburo on that one
Mae 05-Jan-20 02:23 PM
so I probably should know this, but, how do you ssh into the vagrant box? It expects a private key?
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:24 PM
Vagrant ssh
It logs you right in
Mae 05-Jan-20 02:24 PM
nope
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:24 PM
Lowercase v
Are you in the directory where vagrantfile is?
Mae 05-Jan-20 02:25 PM
nope, I'm just dumb
I'm supposed to configure config.vm.synced_folder right?
there are no instructions for this box
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:28 PM
nice, there is a kvm plugin. would me using kvm affect other contributors, or can everyone use their preferred vm software?
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:29 PM
@poultry slam iirc, as long as the image supports the provider then you're fine
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:29 PM
re: version control, looks like github allows unlimited invites to private repositories if the owner of the repo has a pro ($7/month) membership, and this is a separate concept from their team pricing plans. looks like bitbucket counts anyone on a private repo as a user, so it'll hit their 5 user-free limit. looks like gitlab allows unlimited invites to private repos on the free tier but has interesting feature limitations that might end up being annoying ("merge approvals" and whatnot).
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:29 PM
@Mae that part is up to you
Mae 05-Jan-20 02:29 PM
Well
Ok?
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:29 PM
I know NFS is currently broken on Catalina
For sharing the folder
Mae 05-Jan-20 02:30 PM
I have no idea what it should be, I want the box to serve the files in public
But I don't know where to mount that to
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:30 PM
https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/synced-folders/basic_usage.html
Basic Usage - Synced Folders - Vagrant by HashiCorp
Synced folders are configured within your Vagrantfile using the config.vm.synced_folder method.
@Cloaked if there's a place for it you can also spin up a full gitlab server
Which I believe is fully featured
But that could be some heavy lifting if you want to keep it hosted
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:33 PM
True. Yeah, I'm not sure how much that setup would require in terms of fiddle time and dollars.
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:34 PM
It could be simple with digital ocean
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:38 PM
hrm it looks like they also have pricing plans defined for self-hosted with the same feature breakdown as their hosting: https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/#self-managed
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:39 PM
@Cloaked we use this at work and it's free https://gogs.io
Gogs: A painless self-hosted Git service
Gogs is a painless self-hosted Git service.
We'd just need to find a home for it
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:40 PM
neat
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:40 PM
All it needs is a mariadb
Also, someone can start with a gitlab or github account and we can move the repo anywhere afterwards
Just change the remote url and push
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:42 PM
true
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:42 PM
I have a free tier AWS account for the next 8 months
So if we want to leech some resources off of them for supporting ice we can do it
(Yes I know AWS supports ice and it sucks)
I also wouldn't want to do this in a way where I'm lording over the git repo, so I'd want this to be shared and as transparent as possible
And like I said before I just kramered in here while you all have been at this for a while
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:50 PM
I think avoiding a single point of failure/control is an interesting problem for all this; ultimately even most services that have good user access controls still have the super-duper-admin-that-owns-things bottleneck. billing is a big one.
and I hope kramering is cool 'cause that's all I'm doing too. 👍
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:52 PM
does the free selfhosted tier of gitlab fit our needs?
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:53 PM
I'd say yes from a sysops point
Honestly I think gogs would be fine
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:53 PM
from what I can tell, yeah. if the feature limitations become annoying we could move.
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:53 PM
If you want, I can spin up a docker of it real quick to test
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:54 PM
but the important part is the user count limits on private repos and they allow unlimited on the free tier
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:54 PM
I've heard good things about gitea before, which is a gogs fork
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:55 PM
@Cloaked is that the free tier or the self hosted community edition?
@poultry slam checking this out
Oooo, gitea is neat
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 02:56 PM
wanna put that on the aws instance?
Cloaked 05-Jan-20 02:56 PM
their hosting version explicitly mentions it and the self-hosted doesn't, maybe it's implied on the latter.
it's on this page; https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/#gitlab-com "Unlimited private and public projects and unlimited collaborators"
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 02:57 PM
@poultry slam let me see if there's a docker of it
Ok, gitea looks great
But I'll need a bit to get everything set up and it would just be a test
So don't store anything important in it
poultry slam 05-Jan-20 03:01 PM
we should be keeping local backups anyway
Mae 05-Jan-20 03:02 PM
git.pixie.town is a friend of mine
It's gitea
And v gay obv
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 03:11 PM
Instance up, installing now
LmaoTheKid 05-Jan-20 03:29 PM
That was easy
Ok, before sharing, a few notes
1 it's running SQlite on a t2.micro instance
So, performance might not be great
2. Ssh isn't open to the world so use HTTP
Which leads me to my next point, there's no SSL
So be careful! Don't use common passwords or commit any sensitive data
Also, there's no email notifications yet
So it's a black box